Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Todrick Hall: "I was true to myself"

Eliminated “Idol” contestants use their media conference call in a number of different ways. To talk to their fans, to vent about the judges, or in Todrick Hall’s case, to campaign for a gig on one of TV’s hottest shows.

Here’s some of what she had to say…

On what he wants to do next: “Well, listen, I’m making it my personal job now to be my own campaign manager to get myself a role on Glee. I think I would be perfect for that show and so every time somebody asks me what I’m doing now I’m just telling everyone that I would love, love, love to be the next cast member on Glee.

And I didn’t even think about campaigning for that until they said the other night, Simon said, “Well, you look like you are doing American Idol the musical.” And then Randy chimed in and said, “Glee.” And I was like, actually, I think I would love to be on Glee. It’s the perfect show for me and that’s the reason I came on American Idol to hopefully take this platform and do something else with it.”

On whether being a dancer hurt him: “No, it did come in handy for the performing aspect, but actually that kind of like hindered me. I was always so frustrated during the rehearsals because I’d be like, 'Come on, guys, left, right, left, right.' And then I had to be like, Todrick, they’re not dancers. So that was kind of one of the things that I had to kind of let my dance background go and realize that this is not that; we’re in a singing competition.

And I actually think that being a dancer and announcing that and announcing that I was on Broadway could have potentially hurt me and might be part of the reason why I’m not on the show any more.

[W]hen people know certain things about you it’s kind of hard to shake those things. But I just told someone today that I feel if Lady Gaga, who is one of the most successful artists out right now, if she was on American Idol I don’t think that they would have good things to say about here because to a certain extent I think that they do want you to be out of the box, but they kept telling me that I was changing things to much.”

On his good performance his final week and his other song choices: “Well, you know, I feel like I should have done that a couple of weeks earlier. The problem is, I’m an African American male, as you all could tell from watching me on TV and a lot of people expected me to sing, you know, I got so many messages saying sing Usher, sing Chris Brown, sing Ne-Yo, Brian McKnight, Stevie Wonder; any Black artist basically that you can sing because that’s your demographic.

But that’s not the kind of music that I want to sing. So, I’m happy that I stayed true to myself, but I kind of sadly feel that if I had just sung the cookie cutter songs that people would have expected me to do and not gone so far out there with the clothes and the performing and just been a normal guy that got up there and sang semi-decent, you know, I feel like I would have maybe done better, but I’m happy that I stayed true to myself because I think that’s the most important and I would have not been happy doing that.

But then I would hear them tell people they’re not changing it enough and not making it their own and it’s just really you have to try to find that line of when is it not changing it too much and when is it being too cookie cutter and doing a Karaoke version, which sometimes they’re okay with and sometimes they’re not.

So, I feel like I was true to myself and I feel like I’ll be rewarded for being true to myself and being different in the end.”

On what he was going to do this week: “Yes, I was going to sing ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,’ and I was going to dance for the first time. They kept yelling at me for dancing, but then Ellen said last week, ‘I think you should dance.’

So I was going to be the first contestant to actually do a dance break, you know, like Crystal Bowersox plays her, I think they call it like a mouth harp or like a harmonica type thing and the guitar and people have beat box. But no one has ever danced.

And I was looking forward to doing that, but hopefully, I’ll get to be dancing on Glee and that’s how America will see me dance for the first time.”